Caribbean

For much of the British Civil Wars the colony of Barbados remained neutral, allowing both Parliamentarian and Royalist exiles to run their plantations and trade side by side. But with the collapse of the king’s cause in the late 1640s matters took a violent turn, as Matthew Parker relates.

David Abulafia, author of the newly published The Discovery of Mankind, considers Columbus’ first encounters with the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean, and shows how, in the flesh, newly discovered peoples challenged European preconceptions about what it meant to be human.

Graham Norton introduces the complex colonial history of the Caribbean island.

The Darien Colony was founded on November 3rd, 1698. But it all went horribly wrong...

David Cordingly describes the seafaring daredevil who pirated the Caribbean 200 years after Columbus' arrival, and tells of a new exhibition at the National Maritime Museum Greenwich, dedicated to their kind.

Emancipation in British Guiana brought an influx of indentured labourers from India, whose working and living conditions were destructive of caste and culture, and often as harsh as those of the slaves they replaced.